Spottswood W. Robinson III (1916-1998)

Spottswood W. Robinson III, a Richmond native, fought against Jim Crow laws that made African Americans second-class citizens. An attorney, he worked for the Virginia NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and helped to argue a school desegregation case that culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Robinson was dean of the Howard University School of Law from 1960 to 1963. He became the first African American to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (1964-66), and was later the first to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia as a judge (1966-81) and as chief judge (1981-89).